Saint86

Ben Mee is a solid defender if you're going to play a deep defensive line (as you say), i don't think he's a championship defender though. You sign players that fit your system and where you can play to their strengths, saints won't do that with a player like Mee - He would be in all kinds of trouble with our high line and having to do with long/through balls in behind.

Adams and Armstrong (plus 1 other good option) is a decent enough set of strikers. Granted i'm talking about the promise of Armstrong, not what he delivered last year - but i don't want to write him off just yet!!. Our issue is our #10s don't create enough chances or possession in the final 3rd. Often its just head down running at defence and the loss of possession or running down blind alleyways. Now it maybe that Aribo changes that somewhat. For example, there was some lovely link up play with KWP in one of the friendlies (think vs RBL) on the right that gave us an extra edge as they worked the ball between them and past a few defenders to generate chances - we lacked that last year. But i think we still need a quality #10. We'll score goals if we can just do more with the ball behind the box, and increased ball retention and pressure in those areas will also yield more free kicks for JWP (some might call those penalties 😎). We could do worse than trying to get Ings back for circa £10m. Keep him fit and that's 15-20goals.

Not sure the whole Broja Saints thing is as dead as everyone believes though. Was watching some Ralph's interview clips from pre season last night, and wondering if his wry smile and comments about striker being the "expensive" one were about Broja - in which case nothing he said implied our interest was over - and i'm sure we have had an interest in him this summer. There has also been some recent (ITK?) comments on here saying his family would like him to come back and that Chelsea have been trying to drive up the price. I reckon we're prepared to go to £20M or just over, so its possible (but by no means certain) that another club (say west ham) will go over that - and at which point its up to the player and Chelsea. Broja could very well decide a West Ham are a better proposition than us - right now they basically are... But still, I could see it dragging on until the end of the window and then if no one else goes in for him we'll either loan him (i hope with an option this time!!) or bring him in at a lower fee. I still wouldn't take him for £30M. But if we can get him at nearer £20M he's probably worth the outlay for us.

I remember that game. Broja almost decapitated for Spurs' second - should never have been given. Broja took his goal well in that, and great play from JWP for the two assists.

He's also got a troublesome attitude by all accounts - and would therefore likely upset our squad dynamic. Add that to his wages, and its definitely one we should be nowhere near.

I think we've actually got a reasonable balance. Salisu and BK give us pace and power, Bednarek can play in a 3CB role and is also a good choice if we're going to be more defensive in a game (as opposed to the high press). That said, we do presumably need to sell some players!

I heard there was something in the talk of broja or his family having an issue with our owner's nationality. That and he saw himself as bigger than Saints (which he is entitled to think in all fairness - its his career at the end of the day). I guess we'll never know what the real situation was, but it was clear with his leaving message that he was unlikely to be returning. And frankly - his goal return and effort isn't worth the outlay for a club like saints - we would be paying a considerable sum on the gamble that he'd develop into a player worth overpaying for now. I do think it was always an error to loan him with no option to buy, we shouldn't be doing this unless we are desperate. Maybe you could argue we were desperate last year, but like as not, all we have done is develop him for another club at the expense of developing our own strikers in Adams and Armstrong. I also think we were playing him more than was warranted to try and sell the merits of Saints to him, or to promote our "youth" pitch for this summer.

Agreed! Burnley are a car crash of a club now, and we can all just be grateful that their owners didn't buy saints.

Its a fair summary, but have i missed us signing a striker?! - 😨😁 surely that's No.1 or No.2 on the priority list!!!

Its a terrible bet.

Well the KWP rumour has established exactly how full of rubbish he is as a source 😅

Listening to talk sport earlier and they were saying Northern Ireland will be very concerned about this game. Is St Mary's about to witness another 9-0 loss... albeit with only one saint involved this time at least.

They said on air last year that he'd be back to take that kind of role.

7 for aribo then, and 3 left available. 9 and 10 also both taken.

I thought there was a compensation process for youth players though? Everton wanted £5m for small, we offered £1.5m, and the final amount will be somewhere in between - although I don't know what was finally agreed? So if we have sold beech for crica £250k it's dissapointing surely? This is the best youth batch we've had through the system since we've recovered from the administration and league 1 years, we need to be getting something meaningful for them, although if dibling is as good as rumoured it still won't be ebough. Also a danger of setting an accepted precident/trend if we have our best academy youngsters poached each year for limited compensation. https://www.footballinsider247.com/sources-everton-respond-to-seven-figure-southampton-bid-for-thierry-small/

Just seen we sold Beech to Chelsea for 250k? Surely not! Having our pants pulled down if that's what we're losing our best youngster for!

Is that you fishing for a job with the club? 🧐🤣 Also, i thought that was his right knee but can't remember? I tried to look it up just now but can't find it reported anywhere. He did tweak his right knee the spring playing for the u21's though and got away with it - We weren't too happy with that call up from memory!! His ACL was his left knee i believe? Either way, that's three knee issues in the space of 4-5months.... I hope he's not going to be one of these talented young players who's career ends up blighted by knee problems 😨😰.

I never said his form hadn't dipped (everyone's did), just that people can't blame the manager for what was a fluke injury (24th April) - Looking at the fixtures - he was rested for the two previous games (against Burnley and Arsenal), featured against Chelsea, Leeds, and City before that, but was then rested for Watford (13th March) before that. So in the circa 5-6weeks between Watford and Brighton, he played four times (including Brighton when it happened). He was also subbed off in some of those games so they weren't full 90minute appearances. Yup - see above.

This argument is right up there with people saying Tino's injury was Ralph's fault for overplaying him 🤣. Both of them are absolute non starters! 😅

Lyon seem to be really difficult to deal with by all accounts. Didn't Newcastle have a lot of trouble with them when signing Bruno? Be interesting to see where this goes as I think we've definetly had a sniff at him.

Thats why we signed Aribo - he plays everwhere 😆 (but yes we need a bit more quality up top to make us really competitive).

In the event that we sold him to Spurs, i could see there being a convenient "buy back clause" for whatever amount was agreed - saints look like we had no choice, Levy looks shrewd. Personally i wouldn't sell him for £35-40m ish. He's a great player for us and i really like him, but our model relies on sales and I can't see that we'd ever get significantly more than that for him; plus it gives us enough to invest in a good replacement, and to strengthen our attack.

Furious? Crikey, I feel for you! Fortunately most of us don't get so badly triggered by these kinds of things. Before you get too upset by this old thread that you've dragged up, you may want to just scroll up just a few posts on this page and you'll see a post directly about saints as well 😉! Hope that helps! But regardless, I'm not going to disagree with you thinking the women's euros thread is "clogging up" the saints page, you're welcome to that view 😘 Its certainly this summer's finest example of argumentative name calling...

Any indication of what compensation saints will get? Doubt it will be much (relative) if he's as good as rumoured and we end up watching him in the champions league and playing for england in 5 years time. Feels like the developing club routinely get shafted in these deals.

All I'd say is that our first team has significant involvement in international football and tournaments, ditto players they play against feature in those tournaments. There is certainly more saints fc relevance to say discussing Philips' wrongful inclusion over JWP in the England squad, or Che's involvement in world cup qualifiers to the "discussions" on this thread about the popularity in standards of football, or whether people like watching non league or lower league football 🤷‍♂️. I don't think there is anything wrong with expecting a thread about saints players in the Women's euros to be saints related on the saints forum...